George Dickel x Leopold Bros. Collaboration Rye

50% ABV

A groundbreaking collaboration between the intrepid Todd Leopold of Leopold Bros. in Colorado and the innovative Nicole Austin from Tennessee Whiskey giant George Dickel. Let's get this out of the way first; this whiskey is really cool. It's an attempt to recreate a pre-prohibition style of Rye Whiskey that no one else on earth has the ability to produce at this time. It's delicious as well. Floral with an oily mouthfeel. Although it's hard to imagine mixing with a whiskey at this price point, we can verify that this makes some of the finest Rye cocktails you've ever had.

Now for the back story. Todd Leopold kept reading about a "Three Chamber Still" while doing some research into distilling in the pre-prohibition United States. Details were murky and none existed in the present day but eventually he found a diagram for one in an old tax record. He decided to build one which was a great risk as no one alive had ever seen or much less built one before. Luckily the genius still makers at Vendome in Kentucky were able to make one for him and he began distilling Rye whiskey on it.

The resulting spirit was impossibly rich and oily, almost too much so! On top of that, the distilling process was incredibly slow and inefficient. This couldn't be how Rye whiskey was made at scale. Todd realized that they must have blended the rich Three Chamber Rye spirit with a lighter, more approachable column distilled Rye for the final product. In this way it would almost be like a Blended Scotch where flavorful Malt Whisky is blended with lighter grain Whisky. He reached out to Nicole Austin from George DIckel about collaborating on the process. 

The result is this bottle here. A blend of Leopold's Three Chamber Rye, and some of Dickel's column distilled Rye whiskey. It's an attempt to recreate a style of whiskey that had been lost to time. And it's fantastic. Floral, oily, complex, with fresh cereal grain notes.